Abstract:
Factors influencing entrepreneurship success have long been established as an important research
domain. Even though fashion designer entrepreneurship has been growing to be a significant industry sector
in Sri Lanka, this sector has not attracted systematic academic research. This paper therefore attempts to
identify factors influencing success in fashion designer entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. The paper is based on
an initial qualitative exploratory stage of an ongoing study. Based on in-depth interview techniques, this paper
investigates factors influencing entrepreneurial success as perceived by the interview participants. The study
reveals key success factors in four main propositions: behavioural factors, social capital, human capital and
strategic factors. The most highlighted behavioural factors are being proactive, opportunity recognition and
creativity. Innovative orientation strategies, competitive strategies and human resources strategies are the
most emphasized strategic factors. Even though the sample size is limited to differentiate between the
strategies implemented by the start-up and the established entrepreneurs, the innovation process can be
differentiated between the two categories. The findings of this research will help practitioners and policy
makers in nurturing entrepreneurial initiatives in creative industries, particularly in the SME fashion
designers sector in Sri Lanka. The outcome of this initial exploratory phase will be used along with the
literature findings to develop the conceptual framework and to identify operational measures for the
quantitative survey. The outcome of the quantitative phase will be helpful to validate these research findings to
a larger population of fashion designer entrepreneurs.